Stressful days (I)

I can’t believe it’s been nearly two weeks without writing a single word. Well, if I look back now at how many things have been going I guess it may reasonable…

Recruiting. That’s what has been driving me crazy in the last two weeks. Stern is a school particularly strong in finance and around 40% of the students end up joining an investment bank. Thus, all the big banks have been – and still are – in campus lately: Citigroup, JP, GS, Lehmans, UBS,….time consuming corporate presentations and a number of events that one must attend in order to make it into the closed list due November, that is, the key for the interviews for a summer internship and, probably, for a postgrad job.

Life is hectic in campus at the moment. Students who want to go into IB are pretty busy with all these activities. Then you also have the students who do not want to go into IB, who are more relaxed. And you finally have the ones who do not have a clear idea of what they wanna do (that’s basically me).

Business schools like Stern provide so many opportunities that, if you don’t have a clear idea of what to do, you may be overwhelmed in one way or another. For instance you may broaden (even more) your options or, on the other hand you may be easily sucked in by the IB recruiting process (you know, the gimmick of the so called sexy deals, amazing compensations, luxury presentations, etc). In the latter case, we had been warned about it. As I said before, most students go for IB so they have lots of action going on….and if you are not part of it you feel like you are missing something that everyone is “enjoying”.

That’s been my problem. I was kind of sure that I didn’t want to go into IB b/c I already know from my “lawyer times” what an awful work-personal life balance is and I still remember how pissed off I used to be. I have already experienced what the "sexy stuff" that banks sell is. And I don’t want it any more even if I may make 200K+ a year and may pay off my dues in one year. My mom rang me three or four days ago to talk for a while and she asked me about jobs and stuff and I spent some time to tell her why I did not want IB….two hours later I was sitting in first row of Lehmans’ presentation asking myself what the hell I was doing there. When the presentation finished I simply didn’t feel like talking to the bankers to network. I just left. It’s been my very last IB event so far. And I feel much better now. But who knows, if things don't turn out properly I may need to come back....

I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing in the short term. I would like to do sth finance related (corporate finance, business development, etc) in the industry…. General Electric, Canon, Disney,…, they are just some of the alternatives I am already tackling but there are many more left to come. The media sector looks particularly appealing to me but it’s very hard to make it through. We´ll see….

I am gonna spend most of the weekend studying b/c mid terms are just around the corner. I hope I will be able to write something else about these past weeks.

I have just arrived home from having dinner with my study group. They had organized a dinner for my birthday. So nice from them. I haven't been able to stop cracking a smile all night. People are amazed by how much I smile. I think that nobody ever told me so before. I further guess that it is a sign that, despite the stressful days I'm going through now, I am feeling great...

Ciao